Swinburn Island is one of the most remote places that I can find on a map that is still technically within the city limits of New York City.

It’s miles away from any landmass, outside the protected harbor, almost out to sea,

but pretty close to the South Beach Boardwalk on Staten Island,

which is why I left from there with Erin Allen and Blake McDowell on an almost too windy morning in August.

We could see the Verrazano as we crossed the channel,

first to Hoffman Island.

I was a little worried about getting too far out with the wind so strong,

but from Hoffman Island, it would only be another mile, and we could tell the tide was pushing in the direction we wanted to go.

“Should we try it?” I asked,

and we did.

We landed in a protected cove,

a breakwater held back the waves and wind.

It seemed made of stones but drew closer, there were many other things; pieces of iron, massive gears.

The island was constructed from debris, so the symmetrical shape and protected harbor now all made sense.

We walked into the interior.

It was a strange and ghostly place, so different than the lush and varied habitat of Hoffman Island. It seemed mostly cormorants living there, and the remains of ones who had lived there before,

nests,

bones,

shells from a crab feast.

What must it be like to live in a nursery, a toilet, and a graveyard all at once?

From a distance, I wondered why all the structures on the island were painted white,

but up close I realized it wasn’t paint at all, but a ghostly layer of cormorant guano

making the whole island seem even more bone-like and mysterious.

We watched two identical container ships pass each other as if disappearing into a gigantic mirror.

Luckily Blake caught it all on film. (16mm Bolex, H5 reflex)

We let the wind push us back, away from Swinburn,

back past Hoffman Island,

Back to the beach at Staten Island

Later that day Erin sent me a link to something, a possible match for a creature that we’de seen on Swinburn island. An enitre pool of them, actually, each several inches long, swimming in an abandoned sewer drain.

and if you want to have nightmares tonight, look it up.

 

I met Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus at the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Kayak Launch early Sunday morning,

and we set out to explore the bay.

I wanted them to see something that I remember there

the wreck of a floating nightclub near College Point.

As we floated quietly inside the barge, it reminded me of how I met Tali and Kyle at noise music venues in Greenpoint in the early aughts,

there was something similar about being wrapped in our own perceptions of the environment, almost like being washed over by a massive soundscape.

Of course, this also all makes me uncomfortably aware of the time that has passed.

Each time I visit this place, I can see how the boat is sinking deeper into the bay, deeper into the mud, and into its own crumbling sub-structure.

When I came here with Elizabeth Albert and Stayc St.Onge in 2012, we actually walked around on the upper floors,

and again with Anne Thompson in 2018, there was still a twinkle of its former function.

I remembered finding something online back then about the entrepreneurial nightclub owner and his dream of a floating venue, but I wonder now if I made it all up for the blog.

Either way, the party will be over in another few years.

We paddle back out into the bay,

in time to see a local dragon boat crew pass on their daily exercise.

This isn’t just any sports club though, these are the Guardians of Flushing Bay, a waterfront action and advocacy campaign started in 2015 primarily by the Empire Dragon Boat Team, a group of breast cancer survivors looking for ways to clean up the water and shoreline. The Guardians have since expanded to include members from other teams, area residents, a partnership with the Riverkeeper, neighborhood associations, and local housing and labor groups.

Speaking of the Guardians of Flushing Bay, we have another stop to make.

Cody Herrmann is an artist and activist, also a Guardian of Flushing Bay.

She agreed to show us around Flushing Creek, the heart and home of her artwork and political actions.

Cody told us about the plans for development along the waterfront here, a reality that her work has helped bring attention to in recent years.

The ‘Special Flushing Waterfront District’ will mean thousands of new apartments, shops, and a hotel along Flushing Creek. Although the developers promise public waterfront access, the Guardians of Flushing Bay want to make sure it doesn’t also destroy the surrounding community and creek ecology.

Cody showed us the place where she originally walked down to the water to take a sample as a student of Rob Buchanan’s Citizens’ Water Quality Testing Program.

That experience opened up a world to Cody that flourishes to this day, like in her ongoing project, the ’Passive Recreation Platform’,

a living dock that Cody made in 2019, host to countless activities, projects, exhibitions, and picnics.

The term, ‘passive recreation’ is something that you hear in urban park planning and ecological restoration – a non-competitive, non-consumptive, low-impact use of the landscape.

In Cody’s case, this living dock actually encourages the growth of native plants and animals. There are baskets underneath the dock for oysters but they provide habitat for all kinds of other things too,

like a crab,

who must have crawled in when he was about this size.

Looking up close at an oyster shell,

we saw creatures that looked like a tiny eyes.

When we submerged the shell, the eyes opened, and tiny waving arms came out.

Paddling back along the pier, we realized that every structure at the waterline, and every bank was covered with the tiny eye creatures,

and below the waterline they were all open, filtering water with millions of tiny arms.

If we had not been sitting on the dock and looking at everything so closely, we never would have known about the arms,

or the eyes.

That seems true for so many things, and it makes a strong argument for passive recreation.

The city always looks great right after it rains.

Everything is rinsed and glowing, all unfriendly thoughts forgotten.

The river does not benefit the same way, though, because the rainwater washes here.

Additionally there is the problem of the Combined Sewer Overflow, which was made very apparent to most New Yorkers in the recent flood,

but this was months before the flood,

when I picked up Tamara Capeda and Leo in Greenpoint, with a mission to visit Roosevelt Island by boat.

Tamara and I went on almost the exact same trip here during the second year of the Tide Taxi.

Manhattan looks much the same as it did back then,

but Brooklyn and Queens have changed dramatically with giant new condominiums.

here is how the Greenpoint waterfront looked on our trip in 2006,

and this is from the same trip, looking forward to Roosevelt Island. You will see the difference in a minute.

We land on a rocky bank and scramble up the side.

Film people, like Tamara and Leo, are exactly who you want on a boat trip. They like getting up early, and always seem to know exactly how to make the next thing happen right.

The park on Roosevelt Island is meticulously maintained and thoroughly staffed,

but no one seems to notice that we entered on the unauthorized side.

We walk over to admire the Manhattan skyline and Leo remembers a film that was made right over there at the UN building, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

“What if you could make a map of all the films shot in New York,” I wondered. You could show every building, every street, made famous in every scene,

even places standing in for someplace else, like the time they built 1920’s Atlantic City at the tip of Brooklyn for ‘Boardwalk Empire’.

The tide turned south,

and it was time to get back in the boat.

We let ourselves get drawn south past the new cement tip of Roosevelt Island,

and U Thant Island.

“What a wonderful introduction to the city,” said Leo, and I have to agree.

In looking for an image later, I read that Hitchcock filmed the entire scene in front of the UN building without permission. His film crew distracted a security guard by asking about the 193 nations’ flags.

Smart, I thought,

just like a film people.

 

When Elizabeth Albert suggested a trip to the Staten Island boat graveyard,

I thought it was a great idea because it connected to a shipwreck discovery that we made in 2012.

Also, it was perfect for the Tide and Current Taxi theme this year; islands.

Each ship was a perfect island, stuck in the mud, host to its own ecosystem.

The only problem, the tide was not great for our trip.

It’s hard to get back through the mudflats when the tide goes out,

so we would have to stay out for an entire tidal cycle.

That seemed great to me, the boat graveyard is one of my favorite places to discover slowly

and I knew that Elizabeth would agree.

As we explored the wrecks we talked about other sites of historic preservation and the ruins of NYC.

It seems unlikely that anyone will ever care about all this stuff,

but what a perfect place to study the ingenuity and perhaps imprudence of man.

“This one is like being inside a Martin Puryear sculpture,” said Elizabeth.

We heard something strange coming from deep inside the ship.

A young osprey seemed trapped in the hull of a boat, but when we left, he turned out to be only trapped by us.

We paddled to a sandy beach to wait for the tide to turn.

“This is the first time I have been to the beach all summer!” said Elizabeth.

I love that she thinks of this as going to the beach, a tiny scrap of sand beneath the Freshkills landfill.

We had just examined a spot where something was seeping out onto the sidewalk.

The land under the grass must look like the rest of the shore around us, seemingly made of scrap metal.

Elizabeth is a great appreciator of all aspects of the waterfront, natural and derelict.

In fact, Elizabeth wrote a book on the subject, “Silent Beaches” which tells the story of 10 areas in NYC where neglect and mismanagement have shaped the coast.

“What are you working on now?” I asked.

“I’m writing a children’s book!” she said, seeming almost surprised with herself.

Elizabeth showed me the beautiful illustrations that will be part of the work.

She is connecting the book to her research about the Gowanus canal.

It’s about a muskrat and a mouse, orphaned by a storm who make their way among the wreckage.

“Sounds like us,” I thought.

The Freshkills Park: Field R/D is a public art platform and research program designed by Dylan Gauthier and Mariel Villeré centered around the new Freshkills Park in Staten Island.

The huge array of projects they support explore every corner of conceptual art, with publications, exhibitions, discussion forums, dinner parties, virtual realities, and field trips, (Photo by Natalie Conn)

which is how we came to this gate with permission to enter the historic Freshkills landfill (soon to be Freshkills Park),

and we were waved through.

The crew was Dylan Gauthier, Sto Len, and Ashley Frenkel, and our objective; to see the park from the water and generate some conversation around toxicity and remediation,

which of course, is my favorite thing to do.

As we glided past acres of salt marsh with osprey wheeling overhead, we talked about the Field R/D project and how things got started.

Some of the first proposals were massive installations like the Dufala Brothers’ ‘Dominoes’ an action that would have assembled all the dumpsters left in the park into a massive earthwork-scale kinetic event. (image courtesy Steven and Billy Dufala)

It would be like Storm King, Dylan imagined, but instead of big steal forms sitting still forever, the sculpture would be engaged, mobile, AND monumental. What could be better?

As the group met over presentations, dinners, and site visits, things began to take form in a different way,

like Nancy Nowacek’s ‘Fieldwork’ a movement piece shot in 360 video offering viewers a participant oriented experience of the choreography and of the site, (still from Nancy’s 360 video)

or Sto Len’s beautiful interactive video ‘Away is a Place’ where viewers navigate through a 3D scan of the park. (photo courtesy of sTo Len)

The research residency format came to embrace change as an organizing principle, and the projects, because of their evanescent quality, contrast meaningfully with the horrific permanence of the landfill itself.

Dylan had explained this to me over the years, but it made more sense when I saw the site for myself.

The park is enormous and we were absolutely surrounded by rolling hills that look more like southern Montana than Staten Island.

In fact, when the mounds were in use, this was the largest manmade structure in the world and the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine. (Photo Lawrence Muresan for The New York Times in 1982)

As we traversed the creeks and inlets it was hard to even imagine what that must have been like.

The landscape at the waterline is more similar to what it might have been like had the landfill never existed; perfectly flat, each bank of cordgrass blocking out the view for miles in every direction.

We headed for the Isle of Meadows, passing some mounds that are still in the process of being sealed.

You can see the massive plastic sheet, or ‘giotextile’, that covers the trash, and the tons of earth that cover that.

We passed by miles of another kind of prophylactic infrastructure.

“Is this fence supposed to keep us in or out?” we wondered,

never feeling like we were on the correct side.

 

On a hot windless day in the middle of July, I paddled into Pellham Bay with David Fierman and Charley Stephenson.

It’s a place that David knows well, having grown up in the area.

He told us all the local lore, the various reputations of each yacht club, and the decades-old disputes between neighbors.

David said he’d ask his mom for details on that last one, but just seeing the architectural decisions, bayside pools, high stone fences, we could well imagine.

David pointed out historic locations for teenagers to get stoned,

and we discovered some new ones.

It’s weird, said David I spent so much time on the shore all around here growing up, but never in boats.

As we paddled further out into the bay we couldn’t get around the drifts of sea snot. I had to ask what it was on Instagram,

@rlyonstudio responded, “is that what’s choking harbors all around Turkey and the Mediterranean this summer?” (image from AlJezeera – Muhammed Enes Yıldırım/Anadolu)

I think he’s right, maybe this is just the beginning.

We found a break in the snot,

and dove in for a swim off Huckleberry Island.

Afterward we stopped over at a curious house,

“On sale for 13 million dollars,” said David.

The listing on zillow has some optimistic shots, but even at mid-tide, the island is barely above the water.

We could see signs of a slap dash renovation, growing over, and I thought about how the march of time seems faster out here next to the ocean, and then, of course, sea-level rise.

In the last few days smoke from fires out west has been visible in the sky here, making the sun and moon blood red on the horizon. (image from Reuters)

I thought that the eerie twilight caused by the smoke would dominate our experience,

but the sea snot ended up being a weirder and more tangible sign of climate change.

I guess I anticipated this day with David and Charley, driving out from Manhattan,

to feel something like that scene in Logan’s Run (1976), where they escape the city dome to find that the world outside has returned to a peaceful natural habitat.

They discover that their life clocks have no power over them.

Our experience of the bay was turning out to be just as exhilarating, as free,

but the water was maybe a little grosser than in the movie,

plus our life clocks were still ticking.

On our way back home it started to rain, the water seemed to clear a bit, and the wind behind the rain was crisp and cool.

Maybe we had spent the morning inside a certain vision of the future,

but one right before the dome instead of after.

I left early for Mill Rock with Karin Bravin and John Lee, launching from the beach at Randals Island.

The water was like glass in the Harlem River,

and then like the back of a slowly twisting serpent as we passed through Hell’s Gate.

We landed in a little inlet made perfectly for a boat my size.

The seagulls were crying over our heads

and soon we found out why.

The trees were filled with baby cormorants, almost as big as their parents, peering quietly down from nests.

There were a few signs of old structures, former inhabitants

old metal fastenings on the bank, like this pirate’s scabbard.

Just like us, most things here seem to have floated over, or flown.

It was easy to forget that we were 200 yards from one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

From our alternate reality,

we watched Manhattan through the trees.

We took our time on the way home to explore the bank,

under an old pier.

This would be a good place for an art show, said Karin.

Of course, she has an eye for site-specific exhibition locations, like her current one “Re:Growth, a Celebration of Art, Riverside Park and the New York Spirit.” showing now on the very west side of Manhattan from 64th to 151st Streets.  (Here is the full page spread in the NY  Times last week about it!)

Karin organized a show there 2006, and in a small way, the Tide and Current Taxi sort of participated!

Back then, McKendree Key installed a beautiful piece called North Overlook (here is McKendree’s picture of it.)

One night she needed help reattaching some of the anchors, it became a mission for the Tide and Current Taxi.

Karin and I talked about those old pictures and how social media has changed the way we see public art, landmarks, lines of sight, destinations.

I used to think of the Tide and Current Taxi, my camera, boat, as a single portal, looking back at the city, now there are many.

I posted my picture of Manhattan on Instagram.

“I’m waving from my window!” said @the_rachelgolub,

and she really was.

Elizabeth Webb is an artist and experimental filmmaker doing a residency right now at the Works on Water House on Governors Island.

Last week, she shot a film of the Red Hook Marine Terminal from across the water, thinking about her grandfather who worked there in the 1950s.

She wanted to unspool the film into the water, letting it span the Buttermilk Channel.

This is part of the concept of the film, a record of a line of sight, but also bearing evidence of the water in between.

I was amazed that the plan worked, the film unspooled out into the water and followed our exact path like a snake.

At first there was so much tension on the film, we were afraid that it would snap,

but the entire thing remained intact,

even when a boat passed over it.

We hung out near the marine terminal for a while and talked about Elizabeth’s grandfather, the subject of the film.

He was a longshoreman here in the 1950s and it has been difficult to get a full picture of his life in New York.

A representative from her grandfather’s Union was happy to talk, provide records, even to address his racial identity, but then he stopped returning emails. Elizabeth’s grandfather was black, and even within her own family, there are areas of silence.

In her research, Elizabeth has been thinking about lines of sight, part of the landscape over time, but also how they can be used as signals for wayfinding.

At some point, Elizabeth rowed and I held the film. I was amazed at the tension on the line. I could feel the current and the waves, the speed of the boat, all registering minute changes in pressure on the film.

I thought about how family histories reach back in time, tugging on us, connecting us, and the delicate care it takes to hold them.

I worried that maybe the salt water would just glue the entire spool of film together or wash the emulsion off entirely.

We got back to shore and Elizabeth packed up the film.

A few hours later, she sent me this picture, showing what the salt and seaweed had done to the film.

If you want to see the results and hear more about the project, visit Elizabeth’s studio at the Works on Water House on Governors Island on July 31!

I will see you there!

 

 

 

On June 16th, people all over the world observe Bloomsday by reading Ulysses and (if you happen to be in Dublin) retracing Leopold Bloom’s walk through the city.

Robert Sullivan and I wanted a New York version, so we decided instead to observe the anniversary of the General Slocum steamboat tragedy.

That happened on June 15th, 1904, the day BEFORE Bloom’s walk, and it shows up throughout Ulysses as front-page news, people talking in bars, and Bloom thinking about it throughout the day.

Unlike Leopold Blooms fictional walk though, the General Slocum really did sink. Over a thousand people died, mostly women and children, and it’s about the saddest, scariest thing you can imagine (etching by Angelo Agostini, O Malho, 1904).

At first, we tried NOT to imagine it, as we navigated through Hell’s Gate,

but then we synced up with the map (from the newspaper in 1904),

read from the book, and thought about Joyce thinking about Bloom thinking about here. What could it have meant?

“He must have chosen that day for that reason, right?” I asked Robert, “to show Bloom’s empathy?”

Robert Sullivan pointed out that Bloom’s character is also about imagining things around the world, wondering how systems function and connect,

an antihero in literature, but then of course the ultimate hero for a writer, or an artist.

At North Brother Island, the General Slocum ran aground. They say the captain could have stopped earlier and saved more lives, but for some reason he chose North Brother.

Workers from the hospitals on the island came down to the shore to help.

The interior was cool and silent. I found myself whispering, even though there couldn’t be anyone here.

We walked down overgrown streets, talking about proprioception, the afterlife, and the difference between film and digital cameras.

I knew we were supposed to be thinking about Leopold Bloom and James Joyce, but I started thinking about another book, Ursula Le Guin’s “Vaster than Empires and More Slow.”

In that book, a spaceship from our solar system explores a distant planet in search of life.

One of the crew members has an unusual empathic ability. He was brought on the mission to see if he can sense another life form on the planet.

His role on the ships is called the Sensor.

We stopped at the most giant building on the island, an old hospital, so overgrown with trees we barely noticed it until we were standing right next to it.

“Look at that,” said Robert, “a hundred colors of green. The digital camera would never capture this, you would need real film or maybe it could be captured in painting.”

“or words.” I thought.

On Tuesday I traveled to Sheepshead Bay with Simone Johnson, an artist, cultural worker, and organizer of the Blue Planet Free School.

We wanted to explore White Island, a small manmade island in the Marine Park Recreation Area.

This place probably used to be all salt marsh, but sand and garbage were added in the 1930s during the construction of the Belt Parkway.

“I feel like I’m always looking at places like this through binoculars,” said Simone.

So we took the opportunity to see each thing up close,

or as close as it would let us.

“Grass is pretty underrated,” said Simone.

We could see the way the mussels and the cordgrass help each other and hold the land in place, like small architectural miracles.

There was something across the channel that I wanted to check out, so we got back in the boat.

“It looks just like Graniteville Wetlands, which has a lot of old abandoned cars too,” said Simone,

and she told me about the ongoing, five-year fight to preserve the Graniteville Swamp in Staten Island from development. Simone grew up in St.George, Staten Island but is familiar with the area.

The area that we are in now was donated to the city by a wealthy philanthropist named Alfred Tredway White on the condition that it would never be developed. In fact, the island is named for him, White Island.

The wind had picked up so Simone walked back along the beach,

and I pulled the boat through the water.

I was having trouble explaining my feelings about preservation and development to Simone that day. I told her that I would think about it more and write it when I made my post. Now the thought seems simple: I am grateful to Alfred Tredway White for donating this land,

but he never should have owned it.

Simone and I recorded an Instagram live conversation when we were out on the island that you can see here!

Whenever there is a full moon in New York City, I think about Oyster Island.

You can see it on old maps of the harbor, now little more than a sand bar, only visible a few times a year when the tide is very low.

There aren’t many people who even know about Oyster Island anymore, but two of them are Raphael Lyon and Lara Hidalgo, who picked me up in Greenpoint to make the trip.

Oyster Island is in the upper New York Harbor just south of the Statue of Liberty.

This whole area was once covered in oysters, and I think the island was probably made mostly of their shells, that might be why it used to be above water at mid-tide.

When the Oysters died, the island all but disapeared.

We had timed the day to arrive when the island would be at its largest, during an exceptionally low tide caused by the super-moon, when the moon is closest to the earth, and its gravity is pulling all the water away.

It was such a beautiful day and so unique to be on our very own stretch of beach, we almost forgot the main factor of the island, that as soon as it emerges, it starts to disappear.

Suddenly, Lara noticed that the sound all around us had begun to change. We could hear the waves on either side and the boat knocking against its anchor.

This is a sped up version of our hour long picnic.

We drove home along the Brooklyn coast

and admired the giants.

That night we saw friends and told them all about what we had seen,

there were a few friends who heard about it and wanted to go back.

Rob Buchanan, Hana Isihara, and Reena Sheth were able to commandeer the Billion Oyster boat.  Jeff Williams, Robert Sullivan, and I stowed away for the ride.

We drew,

measured,

gathered facts and speculations,

and compared our findings with the charts.

We enjoyed the view and just being out.

This was the first time I had seen some of these friends since the pandemic,

and it seemed appropriate to meet in such a special place.

Again, we almost forgot about the main factor of the island, its diminishing size.

“I thought the island only came out once a year,” said, Raphael’s brother on Instagram.

“Well this year it came out twice,” I said, “and I went there both times.”